


Vigil

by SyntheticWinter



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyntheticWinter/pseuds/SyntheticWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, it never got easier, seeing Jack dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil

Somehow, it never got easier, seeing Jack dead.

But each time he waited, so afraid it would be forever this time. He kept vigil, though he hated the word – hated the way it was so final, hated the way it made Jack seem dead.

Which he was, in a way. (But Ianto didn’t like to think about that.)

So Ianto waited. He sat by Jack’s side, eyes and sometimes fingers tracing the still, cold features. The longest one to date had been four days, four days of agonizing stillness and growing panic. Four days of waiting. Four days. That had been… that had been a bad one, and Jack had come back with a cry, shaking. Almost as hard as Ianto was when he pulled Jack into his arms and just held on tightly, burying his face in Jack’s neck and breathing.

He was going on two days this time.

He could hear the others milling about in the Hub proper, but the sound was dull, muffled by concrete and glass and rock and the buzzing in his ears that was better than the awful silence in his head but not as good as Jack’s voice if he would just – god, if he would just wake up already. Occasionally one of them would bring him a bit of food, as if he were at a fucking hospital, as if Jack wasn’t dead. 

Which he wasn’t, not really, Ianto had to remind himself. Again.

Irrational anger gone, he continued to sit by Jack’s side, feeling the slow, steady beat of his own pulse, holding Jack’s hand and wishing that somehow, his body would take that beat and absorb it. As time passed, he grew more still, as if somehow he could leach the stillness from Jack’s own body and take it upon himself – as if somehow, he could bring Jack back rather than just waiting for what he hoped (prayed) was the inevitable.

He was cold, so cold, and his chest felt too tight.

Why wasn’t Jack back yet? Why was Ianto still sitting here, in the interminable silence, waiting for his lover to come back to him, to take him in his arms and kiss him and let him feel like he can breathe again, because right now he can’t, and-

He took a shaky breath, held it, counted to four, let it out on a shuddering exhale.

All his considerable calm was nowhere to be found, no matter how many times he had to do this. It was hard to hold it together when it felt like his world was splintering apart. Jack was his anchor, the one constant in a world turned regularly upside down and tossed about. The one who knew to come find him in the Archives when he disappeared after a hard day, who drew him out of himself when he would have wallowed. Jack was the one who held him when he needed it most, and who trusted Ianto enough to let himself be vulnerable and open sometimes. The one who made Ianto feel real and alive and needed.

The one who was Ianto’s everything, and here he was, lying unnaturally still. Again.

It was harder to fight the panic the longer it went on.

He could feel himself shutting down, his mind distancing itself from the reality of his cold, dead lover. He could feel the creeping darkness in the back of his mind, the whisper that it should have been him, that it should be him, that somehow this is his fault because he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t enough to keep Jack here.

And then Jack’s eyes flew open, chest heaving as he pulled in a gasping breath. His hands clutched at Ianto’s forearms as he got his bearings, and then he sat up and smiled at Ianto, and leaned in for a kiss. It was slow and tender and full of something Ianto wasn’t sure he wanted to name just yet, but it was real, and only now did Ianto feel like his own heart resumed beating.


End file.
